Return to Pirates Isle - Pre production version or just a missing label?

[OriginalJohn]

I have no education on this so I'm asking the group.   About 30 or so years ago I found this game in a thrift store and I read that some pre-production runs had handwritten labels.

 

Reasons for:

Handwritten label.

Beige shell (were all Pirates games in the white shells?)

 

Reasons against:

Has a serial # and shows 'USA' as the region of manufacture (were pre-production games unstamped?)

 

I pose the question to the group - thanks for your replies!

 

 

[Serafini Lapo]

I've always seen it with a white cartridge (but I could be wrong about this). the fact that behind it is the stamp with provenance, n. serial, I think it's simply a hand written label.

[+arcadeshopper]

yeah likely the label came off or was pealed off by someone and they put it back.. i have a handfull of carts from a classroom like that.. kids .. 

[+Ksarul]

Almost all of the preproduction (qualification) labels are in the handwriting of about half a dozen people. This one does not look to match any of them, but I would have to pull some of mine out for comparison to be sure. Generally, the qualification labels are also a very different label style, but there are exceptions, so the label style isn't always a perfect diagnostic. As the cartridges in a qualification run are intended to test the production process, the date stamps on them actually had importance to TI, and so such stamps were generally present. One key is that the production date will be before the production date of any of the regular release cartridges of the same title, generally by about a month (or a little less).

[OriginalJohn]

Thanks, we'll go with it's not - I appreciate your answers